Happy Spring!! the last farm was wonderful and having it be hot hot was an added bonus. for the last ten days i was part of a really cool italian family. (husband Luca, wife Chiara, kids Giacamo, Elisa and Alice) In the part of italy where i was they speak with a lisp, which threw me off my italian for a few days (i would only focus on the lisped words). this farm was what i imagined "farming" was going to be like--the plant kind, not the animal kind (although there were animals too). every morning i would feed the animals: pot belly pigs, cats, chickens, ducks, tibetan goats, and some freaky cross of a chicken and a turkey. my favorite animal, by far, is the tibetan goat. they're like normal goats, but they are small and have cool calico coloring. i was sad, though, when one of them went on a hunger strike and didn't eat for a week (i think it was pretty sick, and i'm not sure how long its going to live) the afternoon would usually be filled with raking the cut branches or apricot and peach trees and then a huge lunch that would always last over an hour.
the tibetan goat.
the real fun was working with Luca, the farmer guy. about four hours after arriving at the farm, i was driving around a stick-shift, make-shift tractor (seriously, he made it himself) with a palet lift attached to the front of it. it had no brakes and i didn't tell him that i didn't know how to drive stick. that time everything went relatively well, but two days later i broke it so it could only go forward in fourth gear but was pressed up against a trunk, so it wasn't going anywere(Luca was at work, and his dad, who visits to work on the house, asked me if i knew how to drive it, so i said, "sure, its no problem at all."). the next day i opened the transmission, realigned the gears, and let luca do the rest of the driving. (i did feel better though, because he broke it two days later).
the other tractor that i drove almost daily had tred like a tank instead of wheels. it took a few trys but i figured it out and had a much better time driving that machine (even with a trailer) than the other tractor of doom.
it just felt really good at the farm and i hope to go back someday. that was probably my last wwoofing experience for the year, depending on money, so i'm glad things ended so well.
tomorrow i head out to ljubjana, slovenia. i'll be in slovenia and croatia until april 15, then its portugal and spain.
Also, the start of the end of my trip occured today. i have my dates and times for coming back to america:
July 1st London - New York (arriving in new york at 7:15pm)
July 16 New York - Chicago (arriving in chicago at 7:32pm)
July 19 Chicago - home (arriving in las vegas at 8:27pm)
so there it is, i will be arriving back home exactly one year and 14 hours later.
i hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the official start of spring and all that is warm (except for everyone in the southern hemisphere).
have a good day
your friend
chad
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